


here comes the fighter

by peppermintcas



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-04 22:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4155114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermintcas/pseuds/peppermintcas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s an itch in Sun’s bones that she can’t scratch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here comes the fighter

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I'm usually better at summaries.

There’s an itch in Sun’s bones that she can’t scratch. 

The guards find the blood on the cell walls and make the obvious connection to her bloody knuckles, her bloodstained hands; they clean it away, leaving behind the sharp sting of lemon detergent, bandage her fists and warn her away from doing it again. Soo-Jin comes to talk to her, under the guise of cleaning away the rusty stain that remains on the wall. “Are you okay?” she whispers.

Sun idly lifts her fist to pick at the thick white gauze. They used far too much, she thinks, though she doesn’t complain. “Of course,” she says, and scratches at her fingers.

\--

Sometimes, the fury overtakes her. She chokes on it, huddled in the corner and digging her fingernails into her palm, over and over; she wants to hit something, really hit it, take her fists to a punching bag or a person or  _anything_ and just— _destroy_ it. At times like these, she can feel the rest of the cluster stir, restless: on set, Lito hops from foot to foot, more eager than usual to get to choreographing the next fight scene. Nomi pauses from where she’s typing up her next blog post, her fingers clenching. Wolfgang runs his hand through his hair and paces, back and forth and back and forth in the private hospital room they’ve given to Felix; his fingers long for the comfort of a gun. 

At times like these, Capheus or Kala come to talk to her. They’re the peacekeepers of their little group, the logical, reasonable ones. But Sun can tell that even they are feeling it—she can recognize the indescribable high of anger, lapping like a tide behind their eyes. If it affects them, though, they don’t let it show. Capheus brings her to his home and shows her movies, sits by her in the corner of her cell and pats her hand periodically, his voice a soothing constant. Kala distracts her with small talk. “You used to smoke when you got like this,” she says, one day, thoughtfully. “Or you would go into the ring and fight.”

“Yes,” Sun says, quiet, ever mindful of the guard outside the door.

She considers this, and then smiles. “Does that make us your new therapy? Your new coping mechanism?”

“I’d rather have the cigarette,” she tells her, truthfully. “But yes. I suppose you are. And at any rate, perhaps this is better for my lungs.”

\--

"Wow, your doctor is useless,” Nomi says. She’s kneeling in front of Sun, examining the bandages. As she expertly unwinds them, taking care not to brush the swollen knuckles, she keeps talking. “It’s been a while since I had to wrap up a bruised hand, but I still know more than an actual prison doctor. Your medical care in here is  _awful_ , God—do you want me to check this guy’s credentials? I can do that, you know. I could hack in here, see if he's legit, if—” her eyes widen—"see if anyone in here is working for BPO—"

“How do you know how to wrap a bruised hand?” Sun asks.

Nomi pauses, shrugs; she looks down again, at Sun's hands in her own. Their mental connection flickers, pulsing with discomfort. “Ah, you know,” she says. She unrolls the bandage a little more so she can wind a strip around the wrist. “I didn’t exactly fit in with the other little boys. I had to learn how to punch.”

“You’re supposed to wear gloves when you use a punching bag,” Sun says. She’s in Nomi’s memory, in her place, staring down at the nasty bruises on the backs of her hands; she looks up and Nomi is in front of her again, studying her wrappings, turning her hands gently from side to side. “Either that, or you wrap your hands.”

“Thirteen year old me didn’t know that,” Nomi says. She scrunches up the extra gauze into a ball and settles back against the wall, next to Sun. “Or maybe I didn't care. I just wanted to punch  _something_ , you know. To fight back.”

Sun does know; she did the same thing herself. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she tells her. She means it, and she can tell that Nomi can tell: her shoulders loosen a little bit, and she lets her head fall back against the wall. “I mean it. You deserved better.”

“Thank you for that,” Nomi says. She turns her head and gives Sun a small smile.

“Thank you for this,” she replies, holding up a hand. Nomi smiles and flickers out, leaving Sun in the dark: flexing her hands over and over, trying to find a way to loosen the wrappings so she can scratch the itch that's reemerging right under her palm.

\--

Solitary confinement is—effective.

She hasn’t seen the sun in four days; she’s heard nothing from her brother or from her lawyer. By the end of the week, even with visits from the other sensates, Sun wants nothing more than to rip off her bandages and bloody the wall. She knows it would be stupid, that it would bring nothing but punishment down on her; she knows it would only serve to prolong her stay. But at the same time, despite knowing all of this, she  _wants_  to. Suddenly, on the fourth day, she can't stand it: her fingers stray to her bandages, finding the places where they've already worn out from the pressure of her nails, the rough concrete of the floor. It would be so easy, she thinks, staring at her hands. It would be so easy,  _too_  easy—

And then there are hands on her own, gently prying them apart. "No," Kala says, firmly, gently, and Sun blinks dazedly at her until another voice tells her, "Let me."

She blinks away the tears blurring her eyes—she hadn't even noticed them—and her vision clears enough for her to see a gym, people milling around, a punching bag positioned in front of her. She looks to the side and sees Wolfgang, the German, in a tank top and shorts. "Go on," he tells her, a smirk pulling at his lips, and Sun blinks, focuses: raises her fists (his fists) and opens her mouth (his mouth) and then rears back and _punches_ the bag with everything she has.

She feels the yell. It reverberates, startling even herself, but she's busy slamming the punching bag from side to side with all the fury, all the restlessness and sleeplessness of the past week, the unadulterated, futile rage of the grieving. Her father is dead and her brother walks free; her mother is dead and she's in prison, in  _prison_ , doing time for a crime she didn't even commit, for something that her fucking _monster_  of a brother did. She twists her body around, reveling savagely in the burn of her muscles, the sting of her knuckles, and kicks out to catch the punching bag in the side: once on the right, then again, and again, and then she twists the other way and smashes her leg into the left side. The stand that the bag is balanced on wobbles dangerously. Panting, her shoulders hunched and her eyes embarrassingly damp, Sun watches it fall with a clang that rings startlingly loud.

Wolfgang reaches out and hauls the stand back up, grinning. "You fight well," he says.

She looks at him, at the swollen circles under his eyes, the reddened calluses on his own hands. "Thank you," she tells him. She knows he understands, and not just because of the sensate connection: he knows the futility of not being able to do anything for the ones you love, the simmering frustration and anger that that generates. She remembers falling into his steps, wearing holes in the hospital room floor as his best friend lay in a coma with a hole blown in his chest. She remembers the same itch in his fingers, the same longing for blood drawn in vengeance and in anger. Sometimes, she thinks, the only way to relieve that kind of itch is to just—punch something. As hard as possible, over and over and over. “You should sleep more,” she tells him, impulsively. Wolfgang stiffens. “They would tell you if he woke up.”

He nods to her. She casts another wistful look at the punching bag, but it's not there anymore: she's back in her cell, in darkness, the floor hard under her back. She lies there, waits for the itch to return, waits for the swelling rage—

And instead feels Riley's hand in her own. "It's alright," Riley says, cross-legged on the floor next to her, and she hands her a cigarette. "It's going to be alright."

Sun looks at her, takes in her shadowed eyes and sleepless stance, and then looks down at Will. He’s sprawled, out cold, on a bed in a nondescript hotel room. She takes the proffered cigarette and lights it. When she blows out, the smoke curls loosely into nothing; she closes her eyes, takes a long, indulgent drag. She's been angry for so, so long. “Okay,” she agrees, and the itch finally recedes. “Okay.”

 

 


End file.
